A Very Vintage Christmas

I really wanted a vintage Christmas theme for my family room this year, and it all started with this Pin Board.

This silver beauty came from my in-laws.  It's a vintage aluminum tree!  I was so excited when they passed it on to me.  I purchased the old fashioned pastel ornaments from Walmart - its 101ornaments for $30 and shatterproof, which is a must around here.  I also bought their felt sparkly tree skirt for like $2. This set the color scheme for the rest of the decor.

After doing my Halloween haunted village I knew I had to do a Christmas one too.  I copied The 36th Avenue's village for this one too.  Here's her Christmas Village tutorial.

On the Mantle:

It was hard to get good pictures, these make it look a lot brighter than it is.  I couldn't find the right color candles for my candelabra so I painted these and added a bit of glitter on top.  I bought a fun funky silver garland from the dollar store and battery operated lights to brighten it up in the evenings.  Filled my bowl with leftover ornaments from the tree too.

And for the part I was looked the most forward to doing:

The bottle brush trees.  I purchased a package of 21 at Michael's with my coupon.  I've seen them at Walmart and Dollar Tree too.  I used canning jars and filled one half hot water and half straight bleach.  Throw in your trees and check on them in less than a minute. Hint:  If they don't bleach out in less than a minute your bleach is probably old and you'll want to try with a fresh bottle - I wouldn't know this from using a 6 year old bottle of bleach or anything.  The green trees were bleached for seconds just to lighten up the color.  I dyed the pink ones with liquid RIT in petal pink.  Just fill up a canning jar with hot water and pour in a bit of dye.  Drop in your trees and really watch them.  Some pick up the color really fast and if you want them pastel you'll want to pull them out right away.  The first picture of the village (that says Retro Christmas Village) is the most accurate for the color.

I also put up my Merry Christmas print I made:

Truly retro Christmas decor on a budget!